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What Did Texas Death Row Inmates Want for their Last Meal?

Texas has just done away with death-row inmates' special requests for last meals. An archived webpage show 20 years of prisoners' requests.

September 23, 2011

Texas prison officials announced today that they would do away with the long-standing tradition of giving death-row inmates the chance to choose their last meal. Instead, they'll simply have to eat whatever comes out of the kitchen.

The controversy began after Lawrence Russell Brewer, who was executed on Wednesday for the hate crime slaying of James Byrd Jr. more than a decade ago, asked for two chicken fried steaks, a triple-meat bacon cheeseburger, fried okra, a pound of barbecue, three fajitas, a meat lover's pizza, a pint of ice cream and a slab of peanut butter fudge with crushed peanuts. Prison officials said Brewer didn't eat any of it.

Brewer's actions prompted an a response from state Sen. John Whitmire, criticizing the last meal tradition. As a result, prison officials changed the policy.

According to AP, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice listed its prisoners' last meal requests until 2003, when they pulled the records because some people found the listings offensive. Governing found an archived version of the webpage that lists inmates' last meal requests from 1982 to September 2003. The most common requests are steak, chicken fried steak, cheeseburgers and Mexican food. Here are some of the others.

Crime: Beavers abducted a couple from their apartment and forced them to withdraw money from area ATM machines before killing the man and raping the woman.

Meal request: Six pieces of french toast with syrup, jelly, butter, six barbecued spare ribs, six pieces of well burned bacon, four scrambled eggs, five well cooked sausage patties, french fries with catsup, three slices of cheese, two pieces of yellow cake with chocolate fudge icing, and four cartons of milk

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